hanabi-live UI idea: empathy shows a grid of card possibilities rather than rank and suit possibilities independently

In the early days of hanabi-live, Hanabi variants were simpler. Among those variants, information could only explicitly (i.e. excluding the deduction ✖️ pips that were later developed) rule out entire suits or ranks. As such, I designed the rank and suit pips experience, where the absence of a pip represents the negation of that entire rank or suit from the possible identities.

Contrast that with a suit like Pink, where the first rank clue on a previously unclued card will narrow it down to all suits of that rank or all ranks of Pink. Framed another way, that clue rules out the other ranks for the non-Pink suits. That information can't be so nicely displayed by independent rank and suit pips. Well, highlighting the positive clue is actually a decent approach for this particular category of suits, and that's what's currently used. Examples empathy view for Pink (3 suits):

empathy view

The same approach isn't used in rainbow-ones, but it could be (with some creative highlighting). Example empathy view (3 suits):

empathy view

However, I think this approach doesn't generalize too well. Let's take an even weirder suit: Prism!

We could highlight the 1, 3, and 5 as a way to show that these are the possible identities for prism (in the 3-suit variant). But it's getting quite complicated at this point, and I think it's likely to confuse users; either way, the user is having to put in non-negligible effort to consider the card possibilities.

Ok, to really drive the point home, I should use the most complicated example that I know is achievable with hanabi-live currently -- rainbow & prism-ones (3 suits):

The leftmost card's possible identities are: r1, b1, p1, b2, b3, p3, b4, b5, p5. Pips are just straight up not helping with this amount of information.

So, finally, my proposal: overlay a little grid of card possibilities in empathy mode, instead of the pips. Here are some shitty mspaint mockups. First, what the maximum grid size would look like (would likely want to make an exceptional layout for up-or-down suits; all others have five ranks, and no variant has more than six suits):

Then, what the above prism-and-rainbow-ones example would look like in empathy view:

May 23 '22 18:05 aliblong

do you propose replacing the current empathy view in no variant with this grid system

May 23 '22 18:05 Zamiell

Here are some reasonable implementation options:

Replace current empathy view globally.
Replace current empathy view for variants where the described problem exists.
Let the user choose which style of empathy view to use globally.

May 23 '22 18:05 aliblong

some thoughts:

the grid ui will be difficult to see for non-desktop users, not that i particularly case about non-desktop users, but still
there are technical limitations with adding this many objects, for more see this fun issue where it lags the client so hard to be unusable #864

May 23 '22 18:05 Zamiell

I am a big proponent of better empathy. I firmly believe this info (and maybe some others, like the objective likelihood of a card being trash) will allow competitive players to take this game to the next level (kinda like the deductions feature which BGA doesn't have).